Relationship between nursing mentorship and transformational leadership of mentor: A cross-sectional study
Funding information: China Scholarship Council, Grant/Award Number: 201908370108; Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Science Research youth fund project of China, Grant/Award Number: 18YJC630038; National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant/Award Numbers: 71801120, 72002016
Abstract
Aim
The purpose of this research was to explore nurses' mentorship, mentors' basic psychological needs satisfaction and transformational leadership. Moreover, this study evaluated the moderating role of a protégé's mindfulness.
Background
Previous research had only focused on the benefits that protégés reaped from the mentoring relationship, neglected the mentor's benefits.
Method
We conducted an analysis of a cross-sectional sample comprising 366 frontline nurses in China. Descriptive, correlation and regression analyses were conducted using SPSS 22.0. Mediating, moderating and conditional process analyses were conducted using Process Macro 3.3.
Results
Mentorship is associated with mentors' transformational leadership through the satisfaction of their basic psychological needs (β = .13, 95% confidence interval [CI]: [0.05, 0.23]). The indirect association of mentorship and transformational leadership is stronger for protégés with low mindfulness levels (β = −.05, 95% CI: [−0.08, −0.02]).
Conclusion
The establishment of healthy associations between mentors and protégés facilitates the fulfilment of the mentors' basic psychological needs, enhancing the former's transformational leadership, especially for protégés with low mindfulness levels.
Implications for Nursing Management
Mentors should provide more meaningful knowledge about the organisation and protégés' career path, obtain information to help tailor the advice and put more energy into building trust-based relationships with protégés.
CONFLICT OF INTERESTS
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Open Research
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
Data are available on request from the authors.